Getting started with Team Timesheets

Teams Overview

RescueTime Timesheets for Teams adds a shared project layer on top of individual timesheets. Managers can create org-wide projects, assign team members, set billable rates, and generate reports across the whole team, while each member manages their own timeline.

Set Up & Invite Your Team

1. Ensure you have a Team Bundle plan

   Timesheets for Teams requires the Team Bundle plan. Check or upgrade at rescuetime.com/pricing.

2. Send team invitations

   Go to rescuetime.com/sponsors/invitations and enter each team member's email. They'll be guided through account setup and the desktop app install.

3. Assign roles

   Assign members as Member or Manager. Managers can create team projects and access team reports. See Team Member Roles for full permissions detail.

4. Share the Solo Timesheets guide during onboarding

   Before members start logging time, share the Timesheets Solo Quick Start guide so everyone is comfortable managing their own timeline first.

Create your Clients, Projects & Tasks

Before your team starts logging time, go to rescuetime.com/timesheets/projects, click New Project and select Team to set up the shared buckets everyone's time will live in. Add a name, color, client, billing rate, and assign the relevant team members. The project immediately appears in every assigned member's timeline sidebar alongside their personal projects.

• Clients: the companies or people you work for
• Projects: the work you do, assigned to a client
• Tasks: optional sub-categories within a project for more granular tracking

Each one supports billing rates and currency. Projects and clients can additionally have team target goals, useful for tracking time against a budget or commitment.

When creating a project, add Hints for Autocompletion: keywords or app names that help RescueTime match each member's activity to the right project automatically. We cover this in depth in step 5.

Team Timeline & Assignment

Each team member manages their own timeline. What they see in their sidebar is their personal projects plus any team projects they've been assigned to.

Managers see the same view: personal projects alongside the team projects they created. Account owners and admins see all team projects across the organization, regardless of who created them.

To assign time, members drag projects from the sidebar onto a block, or click a block and select a project from the dropdown.

Team Calendar View

As a manager, the Team Calendar gives you a week-at-a-glance view of all members' time across projects: useful for spotting overallocation, gaps in coverage, and project-level progress.

Autocompletion & Suggestions

For the first couple of days, team members assign time manually. Once patterns build up, suggestions take over. After a few days of use, RescueTime starts automatically suggesting which project each block of time belongs to, based on each member's activity patterns and the hints set on their projects.

For more control, each member can click the ☰ icon at the top of their timeline to open the Edit Activities panel. From there, set each activity to one of three states:

• Suggestable: visible and available for autocompletion matching
• Visible only: shows on their timeline but won't be used for matching
• Hidden: removed from the timeline entirely

Team Reports & Billing

Team Timesheets reports let managers see time across projects, clients, and team members in one place, ready to export for invoicing, payroll, or planning.

1. Open Timesheets Reports

   Go to rescuetime.com/timesheets/reports. Use the filters at the top to narrow by team member, project, client, or date range.

2. Review billable totals

   If billing rates are set, the report shows total billable hours and dollar amounts per client or project. Filter to your invoice period to see what to bill.

3. Export to CSV

   Click Export to download a CSV of the filtered report. Use this for invoicing clients, payroll summaries, or importing into accounting software.

4. Review rounding settings

   Time can be rounded to the nearest 5, 10, 15, or 30 minutes in Timesheets Settings. Adjust to match your billing conventions. Learn about rounding →

Approvals

Once team members finalize their days, the Approvals view gives managers a weekly grid showing submission status across the whole team. Each day shows as Not Submitted, Submitted, or Approved.

Review submitted days and approve them to confirm the time is accurate and ready for billing. Filter by team or individual user to focus your review.